ANTHROP 3F03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Talal Asad, Social Anthropology
23 Apr 2018
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Document Summary
The introductory chapter to anthropology & the colonial encounter was written by talal. The focus of this chapter is british functional anthropology, which had supposedly been at the center of a crisis, as it was seen as increasing and decreasing in interest, especially in the decades after wwii. Instead of a decreased interest due to old persistent ideas, anthropology adopted new ideas and became more specialized. In the past, social anthropology became specialized on primitive, simple, preliterate or pre-prototype societies rather than on the variety of cultures including our own (western/european). More recently, social anthropologists have focused on all types of societies. Starting in 1966 it appeared that anthropology and other fields could interact and compare notes on the aspects of what is termed the bourgeois society, in addition to anthropology being inspired by other fields. Numerous changes have occurred in social anthropology following wwii, which show that not only does anthropology affect society, but in turn society affects anthropology.
